I had the HONOR of reading It Takes More Than A Donut To Make a Movie a bit ago, and I loved it. Laughed so hard I cried and learned a lot, too. You’ll see what I mean when you read this great interview with my friend, David Marder.
1.Tell us about your book
It Takes More Than A Donut to Make a Movie chronicles my wild and wacky 40-year career in the motion picture industry, working as a Hollywood Teamster. I was fortunate enough to be involved with some of the biggest films to come out of Tinseltown: The Fast and The Furious, 2 Fast 2 Furious, Days Of Thunder, XXX, Indian Jones and The Temple Of Doom, and The Shawshank Redemption to name a few.
Now that I’m no longer dependent on the film business for my livelihood and the threat of being relegated to the “You’ll never work in this town again” list holds no power over me, I decided to write it all down, spill my guts, tell some tales and share my “Hollywood war stories.”
The book gives you a glimpse into how the real Hollywood works, a view from down in the trenches, if you will.
The film business afforded me the opportunity to travel the world, making movies in 14 foreign countries and just about every state in the US. A large part of that opportunity was dealing with the ego’s, craziness and just plain bad behavior that keeps the mystique of Hollywood alive and kicking.
When I’d returned home from a film shoot in some exotic and far off location, my dance card would fill up with a smorgasbord of lunches, Bar-B-Qs, and dinners. Family and friends were mesmerized by my “movie war stories.” I was the entertainment, the floor show. Everyone wanted to be part of Hollywood—hear about the unbelievably outrageous highlights and lowlights of film-making. Their reaction to these stories was always the same, “Unbelievable! You should write a book!” I’ve always been accused of having the “gift of gab,” so now that I had the time, I decided to put that gift to use and talk, or in this case, write myself into a second career, share all theses “war stories” with the world.
2. Describe the first 2-3 steps of your process in writing your book.
The first step in writing this book was a persistent, loving wife. “You keep on talking about writing a book. When are you going to do it?” Giving credence to the age-old mantra, “Happy wife – happy life,” I grabbed the basic Teamster writing tools, a donut and a cup of coffee, put pen to paper, or in this case word processor, and started reliving the past, writing down my memories, my “war stories.”
3. What made you think you could write a book?
A persistent wife.
4. What do you do when you’re not writing?
I clean up after the dog, dump the trash, eat lunch, take a nap and deal with a long list of my wife’s “honey-do.”
5. What are some of your favorite books of all time
I read everything John Grisham writes. Same with Michael Connelly and Daniel Silver.
I think my all-time favorite book is Gandhi.
6. If you could inhabit the setting of one book, where would you live and why?
I’d live in biblical times – It would answer a lot of questions for me.
7. What’s your philosophy and practice about reading reviews of your work?
I only read reviews from friends and family – they’re always good!
8. How did you learn to write?
My writing career started out by writing a couple of bad checks and a few ransom notes (just kidding). One perk of being in the film business was getting to read a multitude of feature film and TV scripts. I used the same time-tested formula that every TV show utilizes: At the beginning of a chapter, describe the action: car chase, blowing up a building, etc, then backtrack and tell the reader what got us to that point, so they can understand what they just read and how it fits into the “big picture.”
9. When you write, who do you imagine as your reader?
This book has a wide and diverse audience of readers. Teamsters, motion picture insiders, people enthralled with Hollywood movies, the car culture, anyone who’s ever wanted to or worked on a movie.
10. What’s the best writing advice you ever received?
Don’t use so many semicolons. (My editor bought me a membership into the Semicolon Society of America).
11. What are some of the things that get in your way of writing?
Refer to the answer of question #3 but add in ‘beer’ and ‘football games.’
David Marder is a Hollywood Teamster, whose diverse 40-year career spans the spectrum of big budget, Hollywood action films working on The Fast and The Furious franchise, the Indiana Jones franchise, The Shawshank Redemption, Days Of Thunder, Must Love Dogs, XXX, and The Majestic, to name a few, as well as a multitude of television shows including Dexter, V, Walking Tall, Wheels and many more.